Such a sliding device is known, for example, from DE 10 2005 060 124 A1 With the help of a motorized drive unit, a slide with the fifth wheel coupling located thereon can be moved in the lengthwise axis of the vehicle on two parallel disposed guide rails and locked in a predetermined position. When driving fast on the expressway with few curves, the fifth wheel coupling should be moved as close as possible to the driver's cabin, in order to keep the gap between the driver's cabin and the front of the trailer as small as possible and minimize turbulence in this area. According to the known publication, the control unit of the sliding device is connected to the vehicle's control unit so that information as to the vehicle's speed can be called up and the gap between towing vehicle and trailer can thus be adjusted in controlled operation. However, this leads to the problem that the trailer, drawn up as close as possible to the driver's cabin, cannot easily swing past the driver's cabin when negotiating a tight curve, and the corners of the trailer will strike the driver's cabin. This problem also exists with a panic braking, that is, a sudden full braking without avoidance maneuver, which is recognized by evaluation of a braking signal going into the control unit and triggering an extremely rapid backward movement of the slide to increase the gap size.
Another prior art is disclosed by DE 10 2004 045 662 A1 with a sliding device, whose slide position is detected by a position sensor. The signal of the position sensor is provided to a control mechanism. When the gap is too narrow between driver's cabin and front of the trailer, it can also activate the drive unit of the sliding device and thereby move the slide backward.
In practice, however, it has been found that the detecting of the braking signal and the vehicle's speed are ill suited to recognizing a panic braking in good time. This produces extremely short response times for the systems, often not allowing a backward movement of the fifth wheel coupling to a rear position and, thus, the necessary spacing between trailer and driver's cabin.
For this reason, the problem of the invention was to provide a method and a control system making possible a timely adjustment of a sufficiently large gap width between towing vehicle and trailer.